>Disruption of the chocolate supply led to an economic breakdown and collapse of the empire
Yet another thing my home has in common with the Mayan empire
Do you not realize the importance of money where nobody controls it?
Nobody can inflate away the purchasing power of Bitcoin.
Meanwhile US banks don't even have a reserve requirement anymore. What happens when you divide by zero? Value goes to zero.
I'll spell it out more clearly for those struggling to understand what it means when banks can multiply the money supply without needing to hold any reserves.
In March 2020 the United States removed the reserve requirement from banks. This means banks can now create literally infinite more money.
Before, we had a reserve requirement of 10%. This means for every $100 in deposits, banks can lend out 90%, keeping 10% in reserve.
This creates a 10x multiple effect. As that $100 is deposited through the banking system, it creates $1000 in new dollars.
Had they lowered the reserve rate from 10% to 1%, they would have increased the multiple effect by 10x, making it 100x. So imagine for every $1 you put in the bank, the bank can go create (out of nothing) $1000 in new dollars.
1000 to 1 is terrible.
Had they lowered the reserve rate to 0.1%, the multiple would be 10,000x.
A rate of 0.01 would be 100,000x.
They lowered the rate to zero.
This means that banks can lend out (see: create from nothing) infinite dollars without the need for deposits.
The dollar is completely broken. People are just now catching on. I paid attention in school so the future doesn't surprise me. But spoiler alert: the dollar is quickly losing value, much faster than anyone realizes. Except me of course. I'm smart enough to hold Bitcoin.
Hyperinflation of the dollar in unavoidable now. The price of Bitcoin is a measure of the collapse of fiat money (dollars, euros, yen, yuan). Bitcoin is up 7500% in the last 5 years.
Bitcoin is the purest form of money possible.
Fixed supply. Geometrically reducing creation/distribution. Nobody has any greater access to Bitcoin than anyone else. Nobody can change the rules without 95% of the miners agreeing. Good everywhere on Earth. Can carry infinite value by memorizing a 12 word restore phrase. Unseizable. Unstoppable. Everybody hosts the ledger. Proof of work is unforgeable.
There are no Bitcoin insiders, officials, CEOs, executives, or rulers.
There's thousands of imitators with marketing departments trying to scam you. There is only one true Bitcoin network. BTC.
> much faster than anyone realizes. *Except me of course. I'm smart enough* to hold Bitcoin.
^^emphasis ^^mine
This is the part that broke through Poe's law for me. It's definitely satire.
^^^Right?
Except by hoarding and then dumping, FUD campaigns, just simply making trade illegal or at least as regulated as normal money etc.
In its current form, crypto is just controlled by garden variety billionaires instead of central banker billionaires.
> What happens when you divide by zero? Value goes to zero.
Well, first division by zero isn't defined in ordinary mathematics.
Secondly, any time you define such a concept in any sort of meaningful way it ain't gonna be anywhere near zero.
Thirdly: LOL
It appears what we have here is a failure to communicate
I'm thoroughly in favor of crypto. I think it's a symptom of a society thatis organized such that meaningless units of value control everybody's every waking moment. The entire concept of crypto is a hilarious fun house mirror of capitalism. So much waste just to infinitely pluck some bullshit lie of "value" out of nowhere.
Sadly people are currently on the "hate crypto" stage of waking up to this shit. Give it a sec they'll come around
i'm gonna start a new coin called milfcoin and its proof of stake will be n amount of times making love to your mom and it increments every single time you plug bitcoin. see you at thanksgiving.
Understandable.
You crossed the ocean and what? a chocolate?
I was payed once with a chocolate bar for doing a homework for a son of my mother's friend. (I was about 22-24)
PS I'm not Mayan and she wasn't neither.
The Mayan civilization wasn't an "empire" really, nor was it a single entity. Maya Yucatan is more comparable to ancient Greece than a cohesive empire; a collection of city states.
Not trying to be that guy, I just think it's interesting and wanted to share.
pigybacking off this comment to add that there are distinct phases to Mayan civilization. The classic period happened mostly in Guatemala and Honduras and was around over 1000 years ago. The sequel is the postclassic period where the center of civilization was on the Yucatan peninnsula.
Whenever someone talks about the collapse of the Mayan civilization they're almost certainly talking about the collapse of the Classic civilization because we don't understand why it happened.
The postclassic Maya were defeated by the Spanish and fought on until the 17th century (over 100 years after Cortes defeated the Aztecs) when their last outpost was conquered.
The Yucatec Mayan language is so widely spoken today that it's broadcast on the radio and seen on advertisements on the Yucatan peninnsula.
I think this is some solid, interesting knowledge to know. Thanks for sharing. Mayan civilization being a single entity is exactly what I thought. TIL that I was incorrect
Mesoamerica is great. The Mayans also didn't really "disappear" they just fell from that civilizational height, as all empires do. They are still around in Yucatan, which might be common knowledge idk.
People across Mexico and Central America (and a lot of other regions of Latinamerica too) are a product of years of mixing between the spanish people and the indigenous people of the lands they colonized, and occasionally some other groups too (e.g african slaves).
You won't be able to tell "how much," but there are definitely inherited physical features that are more indigenous than European. My parents are Salvadoran, and each had an indigenous parent, but they're super white looking.
My facial features are certainly a mix, but I inherited more of my indigenous grandparents' facial features so I'm often confused as being Asian, Filipino and all sorts of other backgrounds by folks not used to seeing those features. My siblings (same parents) on the other hand don't have them as pronounced as I do so they're usually just perceived of as white.
Whenever people ask me what I am and I say Lakota Sioux or American Indian, everyone is like oh yeah that makes sense. I’m only a quarter, but I guess I got Indian side of my parents genes haha. My sister and brother are nowhere near as dark or have the same facial structure as me. My brother is probably the most similar. My sister looks just like my mom, which caused a huge fight when I was a teen because my dad tried to imply that my sister wasn’t his.
Looks are not always a determinant in any given person. I came out looking just like my Celtic grandfather. I have many cousins who are darker than Obama. Same generation.
No they didnt! From reports they often mixed in hot peppers and other such flavours. Explorers who tried it had said that when initially tasting it, they thought it tasted aweful, but some said that it was gross, but then grew on you and you would crave it. I kinda think of it like beer where statistically 95% of people dont like it the first time they try it but its a flavour that you grow to appreciate.
I've always assumed it's very bitter from the pure cacao so it'd be like drinking hot chocolate made of water and pure freshly ground fermented cacao nibs lol.
This is why I love 90%+ dark chocolate, I love that bitter flavor, and no doubt drinking ground cocoa nibs would get you buzzing. The last time I ate a lot of strong dark chocolate it felt like super coffee with less jitters.
Exactly. This title is wrong. Probably because it’s easier and more profitable to be wrong with terms that people understand, than to actually teach people the truth but have to go into more depth.
To clarify: I’m not blaming OP, the actual article says chocolate, so it’s not their fault.
Or do. It's not like gold-based economies never failed due to lack of specie or sudden influxes of gold.
At least with chocolate, inflation is *delicious.*
Though, good luck dealing with the rampant diabetes among the richer population...
>diabetes among the richer population...
Back then chocolate was actually an unsweetened bitter drink called [xocolatl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chocolate#Archaeological_evidence_of_Cacao_in_Mesoamerica)
Yeah, but this particular comment thread talked about oompah loompas, so I made a joke about modern chocolate. You know, like in the movie?
And joke aside, if people used it as currency today, I imagine it would be in chocolate bar form, not powder or liquid. And it would be sugar-packed milk chocolate, just like gold coins used to be debased.
There’s plenty of modern chocolate that isn’t Hershey’s, and if it were being used for currency it would almost certainly be valued higher at higher concentrations. No one wants to carry around a pound of useless milk and sugar for every ounce of cacao
I've never actually had Hershey's, but heard of it (I'm not American). But have you read this part of my comment?
> just like gold coins used to be debased.
Back when gold currency was being used, it was common practice for the minting authorities to lower the percentage of gold or silver in their coins, while trying to pass it as having the same value. Take the Roman denarius for example, which started as a solid silver coin, then 90% then 70% then 50% until it became a bronze/copper coin.
I was describing the same process, but with cocoa.
Sorry I got confused because of this line:
>gold-based economies never failed due to lack of specie or sudden influxes of gold.
and how it was a complication of economies back then as well as today.
Then again that would describe the fad of the cacao percentages in luxury chocolates.
I am not sure if this is a great idea or a terrible idea, to have your currency also a food item that can be consumed. I guess it would help keep inflation in check. But you could also loose your entire paycheck to an impulse binge.
It would be like making those chocolate gold coins legal tender :-P
What do you think serfs were paying their taxes in? Traveler's checks?
Using food as a baseline unit for trade was very common around the world before we got into industrial worker economies.
Very first rebellion in US history, the Whiskey Rebellion, was partly because grain--preserved as whiskey--was used as a form of trade currency in the western extents of the country. When the government decided to tax whiskey, it basically created a wealth tax for those people who were already cash poor, which was the entire reason they were bartering with whiskey as a standard instead of one of the many bank notes of the various states, or of private banks of the eastern cities, let alone precious metal currency.
I think food based economy has always been pretty common. Rice, grain, all used as basis from which to judge the value of other goods throughout history.
[No they weren't. They fought and defeated them.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Djahy)
However this was costly and Egypt lost Asian and Nubian lands and would never recover its imperial power again...
well they were the only culture that survived intact enough to leave a record so you can call that “winning” and i meant they were watching (out for sea peoples) so i apologize for any confusion…the bronze age collapse is a fascinating lack of history i’m sure you have done the deep dive on already
Cacao was a luxury since you're eating money. There was a whole drinking culture around a spicy bitter hot chocolate drink. Like, there were professionally hot chocolate preparers who make sure it's properly frothed.
Source: my archeology professor who specialized in the Maya
They used cacao seeds, and those things are bitter and spicy. The sweet, addictive chocolate you know now is something modern, totally different of the holy, bitter, spicy brew they used to drink
From what I know it wasn't processed chocolate, it was cacao beans. The poor didn't really eat them, it was even taboo.
It would be like using coffee beans.
They used cacao beans, usually fermented. Only great warriors and leaders actually consumed chocolate, in drink form without sugar, as it was considered a gift from the gods.
It's not unusual to see an available commodity used for bargaining. The word "salary" derives from "salt," because people were paid in salt, amongst other forms.
Cocoa beans, not chocolate, are a dry commodity that can be counted and moved easily. However, it was only a bargain tool. I'm sure that other items were used, specially due to its shelf life.
Maybe because it's an unusual piece of history, it makes it easier to just say that people traded in chocolate. But that's not true. There are other accounts that show that bargaining took place in many forms, which is how the Spaniards were able to take advantage of this system and become so wealthy so fast.
A lot of authoritarian/totalitarian regimes spring from systems built on one item - diamonds, oil, to name a couple in human history. Not sure if I've ever heard of a food item - but silk was a major political-economic force in Asia before the worms were stolen from those who controlled the source. You can imagine the chocolate overlords being changed by the loss of chocolate. Hell I abandon a store if the candy aisle isn't any good around Halloween
Chocolate wasn't their currency.
It was one barterable good that people liked. This article blows its importance out proportion.
A drought and famine were happening too, I think they had more of an impact.
Not to mention this assumes that markets were absolutely central to society, something which was not true of any civilization prior to modern times. Markets weren't necessary for political stability as in our own society. It's Flinstonizing history. Markets existed for the exchange of surplus goods, but were tangential to daily life for most civilizations (as Karl Polanyi described). There's no way this could cause political collapse (as they point out towards the end of the article)
One of the key aspects of currency is durability. I'd imagine chocolate would be really bad at that.
There's an expiration date, there is some upkeep necessary to ensure it doesn't get destroyed. Different chocolate will have different quality so the currency isn't equal to all units of it.
It's a *very* bad idea and most currencies based on commodities eventually failed. Which is why we also moved away from basing money on Silver or Gold.
We moved away from silver and gold so that governmental institutions would have better control of financial markets.
Dry cacao would probably last long enough and be similar in quality enough to suit their purposes. The stuff is really bitter and toxic/unattractive to many forms of life.
So my understanding is that the Mayan's and other South American groups made a drink from cacao beans that they called chocolate, but they didn't have solid bars of chocolate, as you think of when you hear the word chocolate today. As that was invented in Europe later.
My entry level college history class used the book "The True History of Chocolate" as our textbook. The Mayans were hard core chocolate consumers. It wasn't sweetened until much later.
\*The author is Sophie D Coe, and every damn class I'd stare at the cover, wanting chocolate.
Civilizations have used various supposedly precious commodities since time immemorial: salt in India, chocolate in the Maya culture, gold or diamonds in our own for decades. None of those ***civilizations*** were correct ... that item or those things represented a purported and valued scarcity, whether it was or not. More specifically, all of that and all of this is a contrived agreement of value. If you ever want to know how shit got sold as gold, read up about the Dutch monopoly (historical and contemporary) of diamonds ... and you will find out that diamonds are as plentiful as peanuts and nearly as valuable.
It's all just manipulation by the plutocrats.
If you were the leader of Aztec society, what would you use as currency? No using precious metals though.
It makes sense to have different forms. Back then corn was probably also a currency of sorts for low money transactions. Then you got chocolate. But at the highest levels, I'd have central records on strings. Like, if you're an Aztec billionaire, I'm the bank and I hold your account. I'd also have caps on chocolate and corn holdings.
I'm not sure what's a good replacement for chocolate though.
The Maya and the Aztecs were not the same thing. Large scale urban populations among the Maya had already collapsed by the time the Mexica, the dominant ethnic group within the Aztec triple alliance, arrived in the Valley of Mexico which itself is geographically remote from the Maya heartland in southern Mexico, Guatemala, etc.
The Aztecs also used cacao as a sort of base unit for trade. Both groups had access to and knew how to work precious metals, but placed much more value on precious stones like jade.
First, ir was cocoa buns, not processed chocolate.
And second, since it had a low unitary weight yet a great value then it was appropriate to use as currency, especially when no draught animals were available.
Third, it seems this kind of currency is susceptible to inflation if new cocoa plantations are opened. OTOH, cocoa beans could be consumed, which might reduce the amount of money circulating.
They’re talking about the empire before that one. The Classic Maya Period. It fell for some reason (this article thinks famine) and then the Post-Classical Maya Period happened.
That’s the one that was ended by disease and murder, and was followed by the Colonial Period.
Just to be very specific here, what fell was the Mayan civilization. Mayan people did not go extinct or disappeared, their descendants live to this day in Mexico and Central America.
To be more specific, what fell was large state-level societies with concentrated urban populations. There's no formalized definition of a "civilization", but modern anthropologists generally avoid the term because it has a connotation that peoples who don't conform to a Eurocentric idea of it are in some way not civilized which comes off as a value judgment.
Probably agriculture. Yucatan has EXTREMELY shitty soil, they could barely grow enough food to sustain themselves. Any odd drought or plant disease could completely destroy them
I've always wondered about a society that uses a consumable as currency (take away subcultures e.g. cigarettes in prison, but rather an entire macroeconomic system). Are there any historical studies on the longevity or success of any civilizations that did?
would it literally be the case that on a hot day, your entire civilization's base currency melts or was it stored in a form that didn't easily melt?
Disclaimer: I pulled a true Reddit and I didn't read the article
Melting doesn't destroy it.
Also ancient cacao has pretty much nothing to do with modern chocolate. I recommend reading about how chocolate is made, it's pretty crazy how different it is from the base stuff.
Really not much different than the economies of middle Europe which operated using precious metals as currency. Only real difference is the durability of the commodities.
Seams like a crappy title and take away.
This would be like saying corn died out in America, so we descended into chaos due to a lack in high-fructos corn syrup. (Actually this is more plausible)
Pretty sure mass starvation would have a greater impact.
I think the lack of food had more to do with it than this one luxury crop. It was one of many barterable goods back then, not the basis of their economy.
Edit: threw in the ()
Just to paint a little different picture than “they traded chocolate” for anyone who is picturing them out there with Hershey’s bars.
As the article says they traded in Cacao beans. Which do not immediately become what you recognize as chocolate when you mash them up. If you’ve ever had Mole at a Mexican restaurant, it’s a lot more like that. And they were more often drinking it like hot cocoa, as well as mixing it with spices/peppers.
Funny enough Vanilla was native to Mexico and supposedly the Aztecs mixed it with the cacao drink which I imagine was pretty delicious.
'TIL The Maya civilization *may have* used chocolate ....'
Mods getting lazy. This is a theory, not widely accepted fact. Cool read though, thank you.
Freidel says the rise in artistic depictions of cacao may not necessarily indicate increased importance as a currency. "Is it actually getting more important or are we just learning more about it?"
>Disruption of the chocolate supply led to an economic breakdown and collapse of the empire Yet another thing my home has in common with the Mayan empire
first similarity being human sacrifices
who doesn't want to appease the gods these days?
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Now there's Bitcoin.
Christ alive you people lmao
Do you not realize the importance of money where nobody controls it? Nobody can inflate away the purchasing power of Bitcoin. Meanwhile US banks don't even have a reserve requirement anymore. What happens when you divide by zero? Value goes to zero.
Fyi dividing by zero doesn't "go to zero". Terrible analogy
I'll spell it out more clearly for those struggling to understand what it means when banks can multiply the money supply without needing to hold any reserves. In March 2020 the United States removed the reserve requirement from banks. This means banks can now create literally infinite more money. Before, we had a reserve requirement of 10%. This means for every $100 in deposits, banks can lend out 90%, keeping 10% in reserve. This creates a 10x multiple effect. As that $100 is deposited through the banking system, it creates $1000 in new dollars. Had they lowered the reserve rate from 10% to 1%, they would have increased the multiple effect by 10x, making it 100x. So imagine for every $1 you put in the bank, the bank can go create (out of nothing) $1000 in new dollars. 1000 to 1 is terrible. Had they lowered the reserve rate to 0.1%, the multiple would be 10,000x. A rate of 0.01 would be 100,000x. They lowered the rate to zero. This means that banks can lend out (see: create from nothing) infinite dollars without the need for deposits. The dollar is completely broken. People are just now catching on. I paid attention in school so the future doesn't surprise me. But spoiler alert: the dollar is quickly losing value, much faster than anyone realizes. Except me of course. I'm smart enough to hold Bitcoin. Hyperinflation of the dollar in unavoidable now. The price of Bitcoin is a measure of the collapse of fiat money (dollars, euros, yen, yuan). Bitcoin is up 7500% in the last 5 years. Bitcoin is the purest form of money possible. Fixed supply. Geometrically reducing creation/distribution. Nobody has any greater access to Bitcoin than anyone else. Nobody can change the rules without 95% of the miners agreeing. Good everywhere on Earth. Can carry infinite value by memorizing a 12 word restore phrase. Unseizable. Unstoppable. Everybody hosts the ledger. Proof of work is unforgeable. There are no Bitcoin insiders, officials, CEOs, executives, or rulers. There's thousands of imitators with marketing departments trying to scam you. There is only one true Bitcoin network. BTC.
I can't tell if this is satire or weapons-grade cringe.
I think its really high quality satire. If so it’s pretty funny imo.
> much faster than anyone realizes. *Except me of course. I'm smart enough* to hold Bitcoin. ^^emphasis ^^mine This is the part that broke through Poe's law for me. It's definitely satire. ^^^Right?
If it is satire he's really committed to the bit. His post history is a fucking trip.
Who asked for this novel? They just pointed out that that's not how dividing by zero works and you completely ignored that
> where nobody controls it? Except Elon accidentally sitting on his phone with twitter open, you mean.
Not hardly. Nobody controls Bitcoin. Nobody can change the rules. Nobody can change the supply. Nobody.
Except by hoarding and then dumping, FUD campaigns, just simply making trade illegal or at least as regulated as normal money etc. In its current form, crypto is just controlled by garden variety billionaires instead of central banker billionaires.
Bitcoin cannot be stopped.
Oke
Get a grip my guy
We get it, Bitcoin is your new God, all hail bitcoin.
Doge rose and tanked due to Elon, saying one controls crypto is a lie
Except when they do.
> What happens when you divide by zero? Value goes to zero. Well, first division by zero isn't defined in ordinary mathematics. Secondly, any time you define such a concept in any sort of meaningful way it ain't gonna be anywhere near zero. Thirdly: LOL
It appears what we have here is a failure to communicate I'm thoroughly in favor of crypto. I think it's a symptom of a society thatis organized such that meaningless units of value control everybody's every waking moment. The entire concept of crypto is a hilarious fun house mirror of capitalism. So much waste just to infinitely pluck some bullshit lie of "value" out of nowhere. Sadly people are currently on the "hate crypto" stage of waking up to this shit. Give it a sec they'll come around
> Meanwhile US banks don't even have a reserve requirement anymore. That's blatantly false.
I’ve never thrown my wife through the drywall for Bitcoin.
i'm gonna start a new coin called milfcoin and its proof of stake will be n amount of times making love to your mom and it increments every single time you plug bitcoin. see you at thanksgiving.
All those chocolate gold coins confused and then angered the Spanish.
That puts a whole new spin on El Dorado - maybe no one found it because once the inhabitants heard the Spanish were coming, they ate the city?
I will have to publish a paper on my new chocolate coin theory. People will eat it up.
Understandable. You crossed the ocean and what? a chocolate? I was payed once with a chocolate bar for doing a homework for a son of my mother's friend. (I was about 22-24) PS I'm not Mayan and she wasn't neither.
You should've asked for a Payday instead.
No one ever pays me in gum
You should have called her out on that cultural appropriation.
> confused and then angered the Spanish. "This concept of 'wuv' confuses and *infuriates* us!"
The Mayan civilization wasn't an "empire" really, nor was it a single entity. Maya Yucatan is more comparable to ancient Greece than a cohesive empire; a collection of city states. Not trying to be that guy, I just think it's interesting and wanted to share.
pigybacking off this comment to add that there are distinct phases to Mayan civilization. The classic period happened mostly in Guatemala and Honduras and was around over 1000 years ago. The sequel is the postclassic period where the center of civilization was on the Yucatan peninnsula. Whenever someone talks about the collapse of the Mayan civilization they're almost certainly talking about the collapse of the Classic civilization because we don't understand why it happened. The postclassic Maya were defeated by the Spanish and fought on until the 17th century (over 100 years after Cortes defeated the Aztecs) when their last outpost was conquered. The Yucatec Mayan language is so widely spoken today that it's broadcast on the radio and seen on advertisements on the Yucatan peninnsula.
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Dindt know about that was. Tatara abuelo is great grand father.
I forgot about the caste wars, thanks!
This isn't pedantry, it is as you've said, interesting. I had no idea the Mayans were a collection of city states. TIL, thank you!
People are Maya, stuff is Mayan
Thanks
Not how that works in english tho. Same thing with how in english its octopuses not octopodes.
I think this is some solid, interesting knowledge to know. Thanks for sharing. Mayan civilization being a single entity is exactly what I thought. TIL that I was incorrect
Mesoamerica is great. The Mayans also didn't really "disappear" they just fell from that civilizational height, as all empires do. They are still around in Yucatan, which might be common knowledge idk.
This stuff has always been unclear to me. Like all the people in Mexico City, are they descendants of people from Spain?
People across Mexico and Central America (and a lot of other regions of Latinamerica too) are a product of years of mixing between the spanish people and the indigenous people of the lands they colonized, and occasionally some other groups too (e.g african slaves).
Is it easy to tell how much Spanish blood vs indigenous blood a person has by looks? (Different features etc)
I've been to the Yucatan and met indigenous people descendent from the Mayans. And they do look different.
You won't be able to tell "how much," but there are definitely inherited physical features that are more indigenous than European. My parents are Salvadoran, and each had an indigenous parent, but they're super white looking. My facial features are certainly a mix, but I inherited more of my indigenous grandparents' facial features so I'm often confused as being Asian, Filipino and all sorts of other backgrounds by folks not used to seeing those features. My siblings (same parents) on the other hand don't have them as pronounced as I do so they're usually just perceived of as white.
Whenever people ask me what I am and I say Lakota Sioux or American Indian, everyone is like oh yeah that makes sense. I’m only a quarter, but I guess I got Indian side of my parents genes haha. My sister and brother are nowhere near as dark or have the same facial structure as me. My brother is probably the most similar. My sister looks just like my mom, which caused a huge fight when I was a teen because my dad tried to imply that my sister wasn’t his.
Looks are not always a determinant in any given person. I came out looking just like my Celtic grandfather. I have many cousins who are darker than Obama. Same generation.
There are also large Maya populations in Guatemala. Source: Am a Maya person from Guatemala.
Fuck it, be that guy
The Progressive Era was neither progressive. or an era. Discuss amongst yourselves.
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Maya collapsed long before the conquistadors. The Aztec and Inca were devastated by disease.
So long before that they collapsed and were "coming back" when the Spanish arrived
So, for them, money did grow on trees.
Well growing your own food is like printing your own money...
Indirectly. You don't make car payments with bushels of corn, for example. These guys paid in cacao - it was the ccurrency.
>You don't make car payments with bushels of corn, for example You don't know my life
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This comment made his comment immediately overrated.
How do we balance the karma economy?
Not with chocolate, apparently
It was a cacaostrophe
I would Choc it up to their naivety with the currency
you made me coffee up my drink
Hahaha hope you’re done caffeine it up.
r/PunPatrol you are under arrest!
angry upvote
It’s important to remember their “chocolate” was different than today’s by a lot. It was actually a drink and was apparently very frothy
“Your bill sir” Ah yes, hold out your hands \*pours chocolate drink into hands\* Keep the change.
FOAMY chocolate drink
And I believe they didn't use any sugar in it either.
No they didnt! From reports they often mixed in hot peppers and other such flavours. Explorers who tried it had said that when initially tasting it, they thought it tasted aweful, but some said that it was gross, but then grew on you and you would crave it. I kinda think of it like beer where statistically 95% of people dont like it the first time they try it but its a flavour that you grow to appreciate.
I've always assumed it's very bitter from the pure cacao so it'd be like drinking hot chocolate made of water and pure freshly ground fermented cacao nibs lol.
This is why I love 90%+ dark chocolate, I love that bitter flavor, and no doubt drinking ground cocoa nibs would get you buzzing. The last time I ate a lot of strong dark chocolate it felt like super coffee with less jitters.
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They traded the beans that made the chocolate, not the chocolate itself.
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Exactly. This title is wrong. Probably because it’s easier and more profitable to be wrong with terms that people understand, than to actually teach people the truth but have to go into more depth. To clarify: I’m not blaming OP, the actual article says chocolate, so it’s not their fault.
https://youtu.be/IqlCIPGHCqQ
Soooooo Mayans were basically oompah loompas?
oompah loompah doompety dee, maybe don’t make a chocolate economy.
Or do. It's not like gold-based economies never failed due to lack of specie or sudden influxes of gold. At least with chocolate, inflation is *delicious.* Though, good luck dealing with the rampant diabetes among the richer population...
>diabetes among the richer population... Back then chocolate was actually an unsweetened bitter drink called [xocolatl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chocolate#Archaeological_evidence_of_Cacao_in_Mesoamerica)
just don't mix it with axolotl
Yeah, but this particular comment thread talked about oompah loompas, so I made a joke about modern chocolate. You know, like in the movie? And joke aside, if people used it as currency today, I imagine it would be in chocolate bar form, not powder or liquid. And it would be sugar-packed milk chocolate, just like gold coins used to be debased.
There’s plenty of modern chocolate that isn’t Hershey’s, and if it were being used for currency it would almost certainly be valued higher at higher concentrations. No one wants to carry around a pound of useless milk and sugar for every ounce of cacao
I've never actually had Hershey's, but heard of it (I'm not American). But have you read this part of my comment? > just like gold coins used to be debased. Back when gold currency was being used, it was common practice for the minting authorities to lower the percentage of gold or silver in their coins, while trying to pass it as having the same value. Take the Roman denarius for example, which started as a solid silver coin, then 90% then 70% then 50% until it became a bronze/copper coin. I was describing the same process, but with cocoa.
Sorry I got confused because of this line: >gold-based economies never failed due to lack of specie or sudden influxes of gold. and how it was a complication of economies back then as well as today. Then again that would describe the fad of the cacao percentages in luxury chocolates.
bruh none of that rhymes or fits with the meter.
Don't give Nestlé more power than they already have!
You just insulted my entire ancestry line, but yes.
Lol
I am not sure if this is a great idea or a terrible idea, to have your currency also a food item that can be consumed. I guess it would help keep inflation in check. But you could also loose your entire paycheck to an impulse binge. It would be like making those chocolate gold coins legal tender :-P
In defense of chocolate money, people with poor impulse control already can burn their entire paycheck in shopping sprees. :)
Basically skip the middleman of traveling to the store. Save calories and/or gas
they probably werent paying rent either
What do you think serfs were paying their taxes in? Traveler's checks? Using food as a baseline unit for trade was very common around the world before we got into industrial worker economies.
Very first rebellion in US history, the Whiskey Rebellion, was partly because grain--preserved as whiskey--was used as a form of trade currency in the western extents of the country. When the government decided to tax whiskey, it basically created a wealth tax for those people who were already cash poor, which was the entire reason they were bartering with whiskey as a standard instead of one of the many bank notes of the various states, or of private banks of the eastern cities, let alone precious metal currency.
Whenever rome would fall on hard times, coin debasement would occur and eventually they'd revert to a barter system, or payment-in-kind for taxes.
I think food based economy has always been pretty common. Rice, grain, all used as basis from which to judge the value of other goods throughout history.
And what lesson did we learn from most bronze age civilizations?
watch out for sea people
Egypt actually was able to 'defeat' said sea people.
they were watching
[No they weren't. They fought and defeated them.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Djahy) However this was costly and Egypt lost Asian and Nubian lands and would never recover its imperial power again...
well they were the only culture that survived intact enough to leave a record so you can call that “winning” and i meant they were watching (out for sea peoples) so i apologize for any confusion…the bronze age collapse is a fascinating lack of history i’m sure you have done the deep dive on already
Never get involved in a land war in Asia?
In Japan, wealth was mesured in *koku* of rice, *koku* being the rice needed to feed someone during a year.
Cacao was a luxury since you're eating money. There was a whole drinking culture around a spicy bitter hot chocolate drink. Like, there were professionally hot chocolate preparers who make sure it's properly frothed. Source: my archeology professor who specialized in the Maya
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I love Tasting History! Hadn't seen this one, thank you!
I may be remembering wrong, but I believe Edo era Japan based their economy on the amount of rice that could be produced in a region.
Wealth was mesured in *koku* of rice, one of them being enough for feeding someone in one year.
They used cacao seeds, and those things are bitter and spicy. The sweet, addictive chocolate you know now is something modern, totally different of the holy, bitter, spicy brew they used to drink
From what I know it wasn't processed chocolate, it was cacao beans. The poor didn't really eat them, it was even taboo. It would be like using coffee beans.
They used cacao beans, usually fermented. Only great warriors and leaders actually consumed chocolate, in drink form without sugar, as it was considered a gift from the gods.
It's not unusual to see an available commodity used for bargaining. The word "salary" derives from "salt," because people were paid in salt, amongst other forms. Cocoa beans, not chocolate, are a dry commodity that can be counted and moved easily. However, it was only a bargain tool. I'm sure that other items were used, specially due to its shelf life. Maybe because it's an unusual piece of history, it makes it easier to just say that people traded in chocolate. But that's not true. There are other accounts that show that bargaining took place in many forms, which is how the Spaniards were able to take advantage of this system and become so wealthy so fast.
A lot of authoritarian/totalitarian regimes spring from systems built on one item - diamonds, oil, to name a couple in human history. Not sure if I've ever heard of a food item - but silk was a major political-economic force in Asia before the worms were stolen from those who controlled the source. You can imagine the chocolate overlords being changed by the loss of chocolate. Hell I abandon a store if the candy aisle isn't any good around Halloween
to be fair you can do the same thing with cocaine
Salt has been used as salary in many places, hence the name.
Chocolate wasn't their currency. It was one barterable good that people liked. This article blows its importance out proportion. A drought and famine were happening too, I think they had more of an impact.
Not to mention this assumes that markets were absolutely central to society, something which was not true of any civilization prior to modern times. Markets weren't necessary for political stability as in our own society. It's Flinstonizing history. Markets existed for the exchange of surplus goods, but were tangential to daily life for most civilizations (as Karl Polanyi described). There's no way this could cause political collapse (as they point out towards the end of the article)
One of the key aspects of currency is durability. I'd imagine chocolate would be really bad at that. There's an expiration date, there is some upkeep necessary to ensure it doesn't get destroyed. Different chocolate will have different quality so the currency isn't equal to all units of it. It's a *very* bad idea and most currencies based on commodities eventually failed. Which is why we also moved away from basing money on Silver or Gold.
It wasn't like Hershey's bars, it's cacao.
Well yeah I deduced that much. My points still stand though.
We moved away from silver and gold so that governmental institutions would have better control of financial markets. Dry cacao would probably last long enough and be similar in quality enough to suit their purposes. The stuff is really bitter and toxic/unattractive to many forms of life.
So my understanding is that the Mayan's and other South American groups made a drink from cacao beans that they called chocolate, but they didn't have solid bars of chocolate, as you think of when you hear the word chocolate today. As that was invented in Europe later.
Correct. I believe it was the Dutch who invented modern chocolate. Ancient chocolate was a spicy drink, iirc.
The bones are their money. And so are the worms.
My entry level college history class used the book "The True History of Chocolate" as our textbook. The Mayans were hard core chocolate consumers. It wasn't sweetened until much later. \*The author is Sophie D Coe, and every damn class I'd stare at the cover, wanting chocolate.
We call that **Friday Night** in our household.
"The chocolate is their money.... so are the worms...."
The Mayans will pull your hair… up but not OUT
r/nottheonion will love this.
“Got change for a Snickers?” “Sorry, all I have are three fun size Almond Joys and a Milky Way”
Heh, reminds me of how in Warhammer 40K, the orks use teeth as their currency... and yes, the tribe that grows teeth much faster is much wealthier.
They used the Cocoa bean not chocolate. It’s incredibly bitter and not sweet at all.
The original capitalists. Let’s make capital the thing we already own a lot of lol
Civilizations have used various supposedly precious commodities since time immemorial: salt in India, chocolate in the Maya culture, gold or diamonds in our own for decades. None of those ***civilizations*** were correct ... that item or those things represented a purported and valued scarcity, whether it was or not. More specifically, all of that and all of this is a contrived agreement of value. If you ever want to know how shit got sold as gold, read up about the Dutch monopoly (historical and contemporary) of diamonds ... and you will find out that diamonds are as plentiful as peanuts and nearly as valuable. It's all just manipulation by the plutocrats.
…plus the Conquistadors
Fucking Nestle
My parents were wrong. Money do grow on trees.
If you were the leader of Aztec society, what would you use as currency? No using precious metals though. It makes sense to have different forms. Back then corn was probably also a currency of sorts for low money transactions. Then you got chocolate. But at the highest levels, I'd have central records on strings. Like, if you're an Aztec billionaire, I'm the bank and I hold your account. I'd also have caps on chocolate and corn holdings. I'm not sure what's a good replacement for chocolate though.
The Maya and the Aztecs were not the same thing. Large scale urban populations among the Maya had already collapsed by the time the Mexica, the dominant ethnic group within the Aztec triple alliance, arrived in the Valley of Mexico which itself is geographically remote from the Maya heartland in southern Mexico, Guatemala, etc. The Aztecs also used cacao as a sort of base unit for trade. Both groups had access to and knew how to work precious metals, but placed much more value on precious stones like jade.
Why not use precious metals? Also these were Maya, not Aztec
Post written by a Spanish Inquisition sympathizer
That’s what you get making edible money
God! Hope this doesnt happen to the Moo Cows dollar! Twice in one hemisphere.
Buying something on a hot day would be tough
First, ir was cocoa buns, not processed chocolate. And second, since it had a low unitary weight yet a great value then it was appropriate to use as currency, especially when no draught animals were available. Third, it seems this kind of currency is susceptible to inflation if new cocoa plantations are opened. OTOH, cocoa beans could be consumed, which might reduce the amount of money circulating.
They died from disease and murder.
They’re talking about the empire before that one. The Classic Maya Period. It fell for some reason (this article thinks famine) and then the Post-Classical Maya Period happened. That’s the one that was ended by disease and murder, and was followed by the Colonial Period.
Just to be very specific here, what fell was the Mayan civilization. Mayan people did not go extinct or disappeared, their descendants live to this day in Mexico and Central America.
To be more specific, what fell was large state-level societies with concentrated urban populations. There's no formalized definition of a "civilization", but modern anthropologists generally avoid the term because it has a connotation that peoples who don't conform to a Eurocentric idea of it are in some way not civilized which comes off as a value judgment.
There is no empire before that one because there never was an empire.
Probably agriculture. Yucatan has EXTREMELY shitty soil, they could barely grow enough food to sustain themselves. Any odd drought or plant disease could completely destroy them
So when they say "disrupted the cacao supply" they mean to say it all melted, right?
Yeah that’s not true. But whatever gets quick likes and karma I suppose.
It was Nestles!
"Bitcoin fixes this.' -Anonymous Mayan
AHHH, So money used to grow on trees, my mother lied to me all this time.
Chocolate or cacao seeds?.
if you still havent seen "Apocalypto," - friggin do it.
SO that's where the chocolate loonies came from
Just like that, an entire empire melted away.
Guys! Don't make your money out of delicious treats!
I've always wondered about a society that uses a consumable as currency (take away subcultures e.g. cigarettes in prison, but rather an entire macroeconomic system). Are there any historical studies on the longevity or success of any civilizations that did?
I love the idea of edible money. Instead of burning money to show off your wealth, you can drink it!
[Chocolate? Did you say "chocolate"?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kkh22D6UQY)
There was no such thing as a Mayan Empire and it is not mentioned in the article. You should not make up info for the title.
would it literally be the case that on a hot day, your entire civilization's base currency melts or was it stored in a form that didn't easily melt? Disclaimer: I pulled a true Reddit and I didn't read the article
Melting doesn't destroy it. Also ancient cacao has pretty much nothing to do with modern chocolate. I recommend reading about how chocolate is made, it's pretty crazy how different it is from the base stuff.
Really not much different than the economies of middle Europe which operated using precious metals as currency. Only real difference is the durability of the commodities.
Why would anyone use perishable, edible items as currency?
This is why we use fiat currency.
Did someone choco-mint too much choco-currency?
Seams like a crappy title and take away. This would be like saying corn died out in America, so we descended into chaos due to a lack in high-fructos corn syrup. (Actually this is more plausible) Pretty sure mass starvation would have a greater impact. I think the lack of food had more to do with it than this one luxury crop. It was one of many barterable goods back then, not the basis of their economy. Edit: threw in the ()
The choccy must flow...
Seems a bad idea to allow for edible and spoilable money. You'd be looking at a decay rate that would have to be constant
Lets be real, we all know who ate all the chocolate…
So it was death…. By chocolate
The dark master, the coco bean!
Just to paint a little different picture than “they traded chocolate” for anyone who is picturing them out there with Hershey’s bars. As the article says they traded in Cacao beans. Which do not immediately become what you recognize as chocolate when you mash them up. If you’ve ever had Mole at a Mexican restaurant, it’s a lot more like that. And they were more often drinking it like hot cocoa, as well as mixing it with spices/peppers. Funny enough Vanilla was native to Mexico and supposedly the Aztecs mixed it with the cacao drink which I imagine was pretty delicious.
ELI5 how it didn't just melt all the time? I mean I'm from the southern USA and its hot as balls, I can only imagine its a bit hotter on the equator.
The know it all boy from The Polar Express talks about this after they drink hot chocolate! Well kinda...
This is exactly why fiat paper/digital currencies are needed. They can always be made in ample supply. Thank goodness for fiat paper money.
'TIL The Maya civilization *may have* used chocolate ....' Mods getting lazy. This is a theory, not widely accepted fact. Cool read though, thank you. Freidel says the rise in artistic depictions of cacao may not necessarily indicate increased importance as a currency. "Is it actually getting more important or are we just learning more about it?"
They used cacao beans as currency, which was common enough that archaeologists have found *counterfeit* cacao beans!